Windows Mail slow...

[John Burnie]

Since I started using Windows Mail (with Vista Home Premium), it has been
very slow when accessing my Contacts List (which contains about 1,000
contacts).
In Tools - Options - Send, if I tick "Automatically complete e-mail
addresses when composing", then Windows Mail takes at least 15 seconds to
open a "New Mesage" window. If the same box is unticked, a New Message window
will open quickly, but the same delay occurs after clicking "Send". If I do
this during one of the frequent occasions when Vista is thrashing my hard
drive for no obvious reason, the 15 seconds can extend to over 60 seconds,
during which Windows Mail is "not responding" and can't be used for any other
activity. Can I alter the program settings to eliminate these delays?

I am running Vista Home Premium, with 4GB of memory. I decided to live with
this until Vista Service Pack 1 came out. However I have now installed the
"Release Candidate" version of SP1, and the problem is no better.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Try the fix for slowness:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/72674-windows-mail-slow.html

 

[John Burnie]

Thanks Gary.
I have been to that speed fix page before (it has a high ranking in Google):-
1) Turning off my anti virus (Bulldog, Vista compatible) e-mail scanning
made no difference.
2) I have no "restricted sites" in IE.
3) I have 1,000 contact files and a minimum 15 second delay. I expected a
computer to be able to do more than 1,000 things in less time than 15
seconds! The proposed workaround of putting individual Contacts files in a
different location so that Windows Mail can't find them, then going to the
different location to find and use them is not really convenient.
4) I have a lot of messages, but exported most of them to archive folders
using ABC Amber Windows Mail Converter. I did not use Windows Mail "Export"
as this seemed to export the entire mailbox only. This made no noticeable
difference.
So I have not made a lot of useful progress.
Are there any other tips to make Windows Mail usable?

 

[John Burnie]

Maybe no-one reads this far down the list... But it looks like I can now
answer my own question. With no new solution offered to make Windows Mail
usable with a large body of contacts and messages, I downloaded Windows Live
Mail from http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview . This is described as
Microsoft's replacement for Outlook Express, and it works just a dream. It is
offered with a lot of other stuff that you might not want, but it is easy to
deselect these items.

Windows Live Mail installs independently of Windows Mail. It was very easy
(in fact automatic) to import contacts and messages, and to make this my
default e-mail client. In fact some storage folders failed to import, but a
dialogue box alerted me to the fact, and they could all be imported
separately.

As of now, Windows Live Mail is working very nicely, and is a credit to
Microsoft. So why did I struggle on with Windows Mail when it came new with
Vista? Why was the lame Windows Mail supplied with Vista? Is Windows Live
Mail a secret? Perhaps it was just my oversight.

 

[Guest]

Maybe no-one reads this far down the list... But it looks like I can now
answer my own question. With no new solution offered to make Windows Mail
usable with a large body of contacts and messages, I downloaded Windows
Live
Mail from http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview . This is described as
Microsoft's replacement for Outlook Express, and it works just a dream. It
is
offered with a lot of other stuff that you might not want, but it is easy
to
deselect these items.

Windows Live Mail installs independently of Windows Mail. It was very easy
(in fact automatic) to import contacts and messages, and to make this my
default e-mail client. In fact some storage folders failed to import, but
a
dialogue box alerted me to the fact, and they could all be imported
separately.

As of now, Windows Live Mail is working very nicely, and is a credit to
Microsoft. So why did I struggle on with Windows Mail when it came new
with
Vista? Why was the lame Windows Mail supplied with Vista? Is Windows Live
Mail a secret? Perhaps it was just my oversight.

It wasn't ready in time to distribute it as part of Vista. It was still in
beta test after
Vista came out. Microsoft seems to be planning to switch to it in the
future, though.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Upgrading to WLM would have been my suggestion to you if I had
seen your post of yesterday earlier. I have been recommending it for
a long time for those who are dissatisfied with Windows Mail.
I've been tied up with some personal business this past week
which has limited my participation in this newsgroup .
Glad to see that Windows Live Mail is working out for you.